Elizabeth Warren doesn’t rule out endorsing Bernie Sanders

Elizabeth Warren says it’s “too early to say” whether she’ll hit the campaign trail in support of her Senate colleague Bernie Sanders.

“Bernie’s out talking about the issues that the American people want to hear about,” the Massachusetts Democratic senator told the Boston Herald on Monday.

Warren emphatically did not discount the possibility of campaigning for the Vermont senator, nor would she comment on the prospect of supporting the assumed front-runner Hillary Clinton or former Maryland  Gov. Martin O’Malley.

“Bernie is there on the issues,” Warren said. “That’s what matters to a lot of people. I love what Bernie is talking about.”

The senator’s stance is significant because it shows determination on her part to use the 2016 elections as a platform for campaigning hard on the issues and because she has a huge following in the progressive Democratic Party base. She is also close to the nation’s labor movement.

Sanders is also seen as having adhered to a principled approach to the issues important to progressives. He is campaigning for measures to close the income gap and to save Social Security and Medicare among other things. He has adhered to his vow to make no personal attacks against Hillary Clinton. He has said that if Clinton is the eventual nominee he will support her.

Sander’s efforts and Warren’s are seen as having moved Clinton to the left on a variety of major issues.

Another interesting feature of the attention the media is paying to Warren is that it appears two major powerhouses in the Democratic Party these days are women – a strong contrast to the band of 14 men who have announced in the Republican primaries. All of them have dismal records on women’s rights.

Warren  has criticized all the Republican candidates on this and on many other issues.

At a recent forum in Worcester, Mass. for examele, she attacked them for using the Affordable Care Act “as a punching bag to try to excite their base.”

“[I]f they want to fight, then we better be ready to fight,” she declared at the forum.

Photo: Elizabeth Warren.  |  AP


CONTRIBUTOR

John Wojcik
John Wojcik

John Wojcik is Editor-in-Chief of People's World. He joined the staff as Labor Editor in May 2007 after working as a union meat cutter in northern New Jersey. There, he served as a shop steward and a member of a UFCW contract negotiating committee. In the 1970s and '80s, he was a political action reporter for the Daily World, this newspaper's predecessor, and was active in electoral politics in Brooklyn, New York.

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